JERUSALEM – Philanthropist billionaire George Soros has funded opposition organizations in Egypt and throughout the Middle East, where anti-regime chaos has already toppled the pro-Western leader of Tunisia and is threatening the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, a key U.S. ally.

Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the main opposition leaders in Egypt, has also sat on the board of an international “crisis management” group alongside Soros and other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood, which seeks to spread Islam around the world in part by first creating an Islamic caliphate in Egypt, now backs ElBaradai, who has defended the group in the news media the last few weeks.

ElBaradei suspended his board membership in the International Crisis Group, or ICG last week, after he returned to Egypt to lead the anti-Mubarak protests.

Soros is one of eight members of the ICG executive committee.

U.S. board members include Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to Jimmy Carter; Samuel Berger, who was Bill Clinton’s national security adviser; and retired U.S. ambassador Thomas Pickering, who made headlines in 2009 after meeting with Hamas leaders and calling for the U.S. to open ties to the Islamist group.

Another ICG member is Robert Malley, a former adviser to Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign who resigned after it was exposed he had communicated with Hamas. WND first reported Malley had long petitioned for dialogue with Hamas.

The ICG defines itself as an “independent, non-profit, multinational organization, with 100 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.”

Radio talk show host Michael Savage spent his entire show Friday discussing the ICG’s ties to the current Islamic uprising in Egypt. Savage also wrote a 13-page paper outlining Obama’s links to the Egypt chaos.

Soros also has other ties to opposition groups in the Middle East.

His Open Society Institute’s Middle East and North Africa Initiative has provided numerous grants to a wide range of projects that promote so-called democratic issues across the region, including in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood stands to gain from any future election.

Soros’ Open Society also funded the main opposition voice in Tunisia, Radio Kalima, which championed the riots there that led to the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

A George Soros-funded organization, aided by Texas U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat, apparently is trying to chase volunteer observers from precinct polling locations across Harris County, Texas, after the watchers found election judges and clerks allegedly voting for citizens who were undecided.

“Only a week into early voting, volunteer poll-watchers also are being verbally and physically harassed by people loitering at the polls with no intention to vote at the time, including a man identified as a reverend and Houston Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who was seen inside the polling location electioneering and threatening to turn a poll-watcher’s name to the Department of Justice for voter intimidation,” said a statement from Liberty Institute.

The dispute has its roots in the bitter fight over elections that has developed in 2010, as Democrats both nationally and locally are feeling the sting of abandonment by voters who are enraged by the general takeover of society being pursued by President Obama.

WND reported just days ago when the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed it would investigate Democrat complaints of “intimidation” by “white middle class” poll observers in minority precincts in Harris County. They were accused of “hovering” around voters.

That followed by only months a decision at the highest levels of the DOJ that the charges in a case against members of the New Black Panther party, caught on video swinging a baton in front of a Philadelphia polling station in 2008, mostly would be dropped.

The situation in Houston erupted after workers with a volunteer organization called True the Vote investigated the work of a Houston Votes group and found that of the 25,000 voter registrations submitted, only 1,793 apparently were actually valid.

A video reveals Houston Votes project director Sean Caddle, who reportedly worked with Service Employees International Union, admitting that there could have been mistakes and “fraud” in signing up voters, including the case of a woman who was signed up to vote six times in a single day.

Then a lawsuit was filed against the King Street Patriots,a group of volunteer poll-watchers, by the Texas Democratic Party, and a “coordinated” ethics complaint was filed by Texans for Public Justice, which gets funding from the Soros-linked Open Society Institute, according to officials with Liberty Institute.